Monthly Archives: March 2018

This the second blogpost of the series on Water Budgeting in Telangana carried out in 7 Gram Panchayats (GP) of Rangareddy and Nagaurkurnool districts and their neighbouring hamlets. The water budgets of these villages revealed some startling facts. This region has received low rainfall since the past three years, inspite of that, farmers took water intensive crops and livestock production during irrigation. However, the very high water deficit figures that emerged from the calculation shocked all participants.

With the aim of “co-production of knowledge and learning to stimulate behavioral and institutional change, towards the management of water at village level” workshops were conducted in each GP and their hamlets.he key objectives of the workshop were to understand the following points: a) What is a Water Budget and how a village water budget is calculated?
(b) How to arrive at values for “Water Deficit” and “Water Surplus” at village level?
(c) The need for planning crop production around the water availability and
(d) To understand water wastage due to mismanagement and / or lack of knowledge.

The Water Governance Standard and Certification System is developed to bridge the gap between agrarian communities and the resource agencies. It serves multiple objectives. Its ultimate aim is to develop a system that incentivizes agrarian communities to adopt sustainable water governance practices at local level for assured drinking water and enhanced livelihood opportunities.

Working with WOTR for a considerable amount of time now, I’ve got exposed to the issues surrounding water crisis. I’ve learnt about the impact it has on the day-to-day life of people and the economy of the rural India. Alongside this, I also got acquainted with the collective efforts taken by the rural communities to counter this issue in the support of WOTR team. It has been an overwhelming experience to understand the perception of the rural population towards such problems, while simultaneously witnessing the positively changing ecosystem and economy. By taking all these experiences back to an urban space, where I reside, I have subconsciously become more vigilant towards the use of water. Also, it was shocking to read and discover the data on urban mismanagement, misuse of water and its contribution to depleting water resources and the projected crises of the future. This article is an attempt to put forth my personal experiences and also, appeal to the community around me to contribute and try to halt the fast-rising issue of water crisis.

There’s a resilience in the farming community that often gets overlooked – a community that has, over generations, developed its own methods and practices of dealing with the unhindered forces of nature. These practices are, unfortunately, being put to test owing to the changing climatic conditions all over the earth. As unpredictable weather patterns keep baffling the farmers, the need for an intervention is apparent to level the playing field. In this regard, we shift the focus on WOTR’s weather advisory initiative which is a real-time, localized, early-warning system which disseminates information directly to the farmers via SMS services. Looking at the effectiveness of the intervention from the vantage point of the farmers brings out the socio-economic complexities which are rarely apparent on the surface.

a story of an innovation champion Shri Ganesh Goud, who has adopted a new approach called the Group Micro Irrigation (GMI) approach and is a change maker at the community level. WOTR has been promoting this approach since 2014, and 11 groups are covering 149 farmers. The experiences of convincing farmers the advantages this approach has been a challenging task – as sharing water resources particularly in a drought-prone area where it is becoming scare every year is a contentious issue! However, like every cloud has a silver lining, the story of Ganesh Goud and his group from Badnapur village is one to share

As WOTR embarks on its 25th year, we are celebrating and disseminatinginformation on all the thematics we are working on . In the month of February 2018, we were disseminating information on Water Stewardship. Our team members, Eshwer Kale and Mandar Sathe, recently ­ interviewed Dr. Suresh Kulkarni, Secretary, Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA). Dr. Kulkarni shared his thoughts on diverse issues in the water sector and his insights to improve the level of water governance in the state, specifically focusing on challenges and opportunities in the Maharashtra Groundwater (Development and Management) Act 2009. MWRRA has given an important mandate of ‘State groundwater Authority’ in the 2009 Groundwater Act

In this report, we provide an overview of the proceedings of the first Transformative Scenario Planning (TSP) workshop titled ‘Water Situation in Rural Jalna in 2030: For Domestic and Livelihood Needs’ convened by Watershed Organisation Trust, on 18th and 19th September 2017 at Krushi Vidnyan Kendra, Jalna. The workshop was conducted in the local language (Marathi).